The 13th Scandinavian International Conference on Fluid Power, SICFP2013, June 3-5, 2013, Linköping, Sweden

Investigation of a Digital Hydraulic Actuation System on an Excavator Arm

Alessandro Dell’Amico , Marcus Carlsson , Erik Norlin , and Magnus Sethson

Division of Fluid and Mechatronic Systems, Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping,
Sweden
E-mail: alessandro.dellamico@liu.se, magnus.sethson@liu.se

Abstract
Digital hydraulics is an ongoing trend that offers many interesting advantages and possibil-
ities. Digital refers to that the system output is discrete, e.g. using an on/off valve with
only discrete values or a finite amount of flow steps available. The advantages mentioned
when compared to analogue systems are better performance, robust and fault tolerant, and
amplitude independent bandwidth. On the other side noise and pressure pulsations must be
handled, the physical size can be a problem, and the system requires complicated control.
When considering control of linear motion, there are mainly two branches, controlling the
flow with several parallel connected on/off valves, which generates discrete output flow val-
ues, or switching valves, which in theory can generate any mean output flow. The latter only
requires one valve for each flow path but the demand for fast valves is very high, while the
former requires many valves but avoids high frequent switching. With the introduction of a
multi-chamber cylinder, secondary control is now also possible for linear motion. This paper
is a first step in the investigation of the system applied to an excavator arm. The cylinder has
four chambers, each with different area. Three pressure lines are used and a valve-pack of 27
on/off valves. The valve-pack connects the three pressure lines with each chamber generating
81 available force steps. The scope has been to start out with relative simple control of the ve-
locity of the cylinder. To handle unnecessary switching of valves, different penalty strategies
were tested. The results are promising where relatively smooth control could be achieved at
the same time challenges with the system were identified. Next step is to investigate the force
transients due to different capacitance in all four chambers as well as mode control for better
accuracy. Energy potential compared to original system remains to investigate as well.

Keywords: Digital hydraulics, secondary control, excavator, on/off-valves

1 Introduction flexibility. The flexibility of the system allows for different

Digital hydraulics is a promising technology for flow con-
trol. It has gained extensive research efforts over the latest
years. Digital refers to the output of the system being dis-
crete. For valve flow control there are two main branches, one
is the use of several parallel configured on/off valves replac-
ing each and one of the control edges in an conventional pro-
portional valve. The other strategy makes use of a modulating
technology. Both technologies are based on on/off valves but
the latter only requires one valve for each control edge, [1].
However, there is a demand for very fast and durable valves.
These are challenges that need to be handled as well as par-
asitic losses due to large capacitances of the hydraulic sys-
tem and pressure peaks. The former technique avoids fast
continuous switching of valves but the physical size of the
unit becomes large due to the many valves involved, [2]. In
this case each Digital Flow Control Unit (DFCU) generates a
discrete flow output. The benefits are a robust and possible
fault tolerant solution, amplitude independent opening, and
control modes and when compared to traditional load sens-
ing system, high energy savings are reported, [3]. However,
the solution should also be compared to other solutions with
distributed valves, like in [4]. The main challenges with paral-
lel configured valves are; system size and cost, complex con-
trol strategies and noise and pressure pulsations. The pressure
pulsations are due to the uncertainty in valve timings and is
dependent on the coding of the DFCU [5]. The performance
of the system is dependent on the characteristics of the on/off
valves, among others. In many cases commercial valves are
not sufficient and research has been focused on development
of high performance valves, [6]. The need for fast valves and
advanced controllers is shown in [7] and [8], where a digi-
tal hydraulic system is compared to a servo valve system for
different applications.
With the development of a multi-chamber cylinder, [9], sec-
ondary control is now possible for linear actuator control.
Secondary control has previously been restricted to displace-

505
ment machines only. The technique has a high potential of
being a very energy efficient system [10], since no valve throt-
tling takes place. The system uses a constant pressure supply
line and if an accumulator is connected to the system, energy
can be recovered during retardation of the load. Several sec-
ondary control units can be added to the same supply thereby
pC
simplifying the piping. A secondary controlled swing drive
pB
of an excavator was investigated in [11] and showed upon a
possible 60 % energy consumption reduction. The challenge pA
multi-chamber pD
with secondary control is however the need for advanced con- cylinder (27:3:9:1)

trollers, [12]. For linear motion a multi-chamber cylinder is

19 mm ID, 12 mm ID, 12 mm ID, 12 mm ID,
used together with constant pressure supply lines. A valve- 1.0 m 1.0 m 1.5 m 1.5 m

pack with on/off valves combines the supply lines with the pA pB pC pD

different chambers. In this way the cylinder delivers discrete n=4 n=2 n=2

force steps. In [13] a four chamber cylinder is investigated pH

n=4 n=2 n=2
with two pressure lines for position control. That system has 19 mm ID,
2.0 m

16 possible force levels to control the movement of a load. pM

n=4 n=2 n=2
19 mm ID,
A PI-controller is used together with a switch strategy that 2.0 m
pL
minimizes unnecessary switching. The results showed a good V0 = 4 l V0 = 4 l V0 = 4 l
p0 = 160 bar p0 = 90 bar p0 = 10 bar 19 mm ID,
controllability of high inertia loads and a reduction of 60 % in 2.0 m

energy consumption compared to a traditional LS system for

the same application. pH

pM
The scope of this paper is to investigate a four chamber cylin- 25 mm ID,
10.0 m
Dp = 60 cm3
der with three pressure lines, generating 81 force levels, ap- pL np = 800 rpm

plied to an excavator arm. This is a first attempt in trying M

to understand the system characteristics of digital hydraulics,
32 mm ID,
studying the advantages and the challenges. At first only the 10.0 m

boom of the arm is installed and a simple control structure for

velocity control is tested.
2 System setup
A test system has been formed to provide a realistic environ-
ment for laboratory tests. In the beginning, only the inner arm
is installed. It is going to be extended with the complete ex-
cavator arm. With two arms later installed, the system can
also be tested for over-centre loads as well as energy recovery
from two actuators.
An overview of the system is seen in fig. 1. The main com-
ponents of the system is the excavator arm, the hydraulic sup-
ply system with its three pressure lines, the 27-valves block,
and the multi-chamber cylinder. The cylinder is controlling
the motion of the the boom of the excavator arm. The sup-
ply system is at this point rather simple with focus only on
functionality. Three pressures are used, 200, 110, and 20
bars. The highest pressure is set by a pressure relief valve
(Bosch Rexroth DBDS10K1X/315) and the pump running at
constant speed. The medium and low pressure are in turn set
by two pressure reducing valves (Bosch Rexroth DR20G5-
4X/200YM and DR20G5-4X/100YM). Two relief valves are
also installed for security at medium and low pressure line
(Bosch Rexroth DBDS10G1X/200 and DBDS10G1X/100).
The actual pressures in the three lines are of course affected
by the characteristics of the relief and reducing valves. Three
accumulators of 4 litres each are installed at the three pres-
sure lines. They are not sufficiently large for energy recovery
operation but will smoothen out the supply pressures.
The valve-pack consists of 27 on/off valves with 50 ms rated
Figure 1: System overview.
response time. The valve-pack connects the pressure lines to
each chamber of the cylinder. The connection between each
pressure line and each chamber is done by several parallel
configured valves. The largest chamber has four valves in par-
allel for each pressure line and smallest has only one valve for
each pressure line. The other two chambers have two valve
each for each pressure line. To use several parallel connected
valves for the chambers is beneficial in several ways. The
flow demand for a given velocity of the piston is different for
each chamber. To decrease the pressure drop a larger effec-
tive area is achieved by several valves. Another advantage is
the possibility to control the pressure build up in a more ef-
fective way. The pressure build up is dependent on the flow
in or out of the chamber and the capacitance of the chamber.
A more robust solution is also achieved with several valves.
If one valve breaks the arm can still be operated, at least for
the three larger cylinder areas.
The cylinder consists of four chambers with different areas
with relative relation 27:9:3:1. Two chamber extends the
cylinder and two chambers retracts it. By combining the three
pressures in the four chambers of the cylinder 34 = 81 force
steps can be applied by the cylinder. An overview of the cylin-
der is seen in fig. 2. Figure 3 shows the available force dis-
tribution. The maximum available force is 129.9 kN and the
maximum retraction force is 2.1 kN. Since only one arm is in
place at the moment an axle is installed at the tip of the boom.

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In this way the boom can be loaded with up to 400 kg.
D B
Figure 2: An overview of the multi-chamber cylinder.
Figure 3: Available force spectrum for HP = 200 bar, MP =
110 bar, and LP = 20 bar.
The valve-pack is controlled by an prototype Exertus HCM-
series unit which communicates with the industrial computer
MPL PIP8 via a CAN bus. The controller software is devel-
oped in Matlab/Simulink and downloaded to the industrial PC
through xPC Target. The valve control unit also provides ana-
logue input channels for sensor data. Sensors used are pres-
sure sensors for the three pressure lines and each chamber of
the cylinder. In this way the pressure drop over the valve-pack
can be measured. The position of the piston is measured with
a potentiometer multi-turn wire sensor. The derivative of the
position signal is filtered with a second order low pass filter
to get the velocity of the piston.
Figure 4: Future test rig of the crane.
3 Control structure
A traditional hydraulic system gives the operator a way to
control the velocity of the piston. The system studied is sec-
ondary controlled and is therefore force controlled. Some
kind of external controller is therefore required in order to
control the velocity. In order to investigate the system and its
behaviour a simple control approach has first been tested. The
actual force applied by the cylinder is calculated as:
F = pA AA − pB AB + pC AC − pD AD (1)
3.1 Control Strategy A
The controller is a PI-controller that compares a reference ve-
locity of the piston with the actual velocity. The output from
the controller is the required force to follow the reference.
Since the system is digital and therefore discrete, only a fi-
nite amount of force steps are available and the closest avail-
able force compared to the reference force needs to be chosen.
This is done by comparing the reference force with each avail-
able force and the combination that gives the smallest error is
chosen according to 2.
Future work of the test rig involves the installation of the outer  

arm as well. This will further extend the possibilities of the
elaborative studies of the system characteristics. The multi-
chamber cylinder for the outer arm will use the same three
pressure lines as the installed boom cylinder. The amount
of hoses is reduced compared to a traditional system. Also,
energy can be recovered from both actuators. The future test
rig is shown i fig. 4.
507
u = min Fre f − F̂(ui ) i = 1 : 81 (2)
The actual available force steps depends on the pressure in the
three supply lines. As they will fluctuate during movement of
the crane, the supply pressures are measured and the force
distribution updated each time step. The control structure is
seen in fig. 5. The measured supply pressures are quantized
to avoid influences from measurement noise.
 HP
MP
Since also the larger chambers changes pressure the move-
LP ment is less smooth. Figure 7 shows the result of the test
with 200kg and penalty function A. Frequent switching is no
Valve Combination
PI-Controller
selection
Plant longer taking place but accuracy has become worse which af-
fected the smoothness. Figure 10 shows the same run with
400kg. Here it is even more obvious that the frequent switch-
ing no longer takes place. The movement is smoother due to
Figure 5: Controller structure. the larger inertia but since no functionality is implemented to
handle zero velocity input, the resolution is not high enough
to find force equilibrium for those cases. Figure 8 shows the
Due to the discrete nature of the system, unnecessary switch- test with strategy B. No difficult pressure changes occur and
ing between different force states might occur. To avoid this the result is similar as in the case with no penalty function
a penalty for switching can be introduced. The controller is implemented. The effect of strategy B is seen in fig. 11,
only allowed to change force state if changing state has big where frequent switching of all chambers at the same time
enough effect. The penalty is added to every force level ex- is avoided.
cept the previous one. This is according to [13]. The selection
of combination can now be updated as follows.

 

u = min Fre f − F̂(ui ) + P j i = 1 : 81 (3)


1 if ui 6= u previous
j=
0 if ui = u previous
where P is the penalty and is a tuning variable together with
the PI-controller gains. u and uold are the new and old control
combination respectively.

3.2 Control Strategy B

The other strategy also tested uses a score-based system to
avoid frequent switching of high amplitude pressure changes.
High amplitude changes will have biggest effect on the
smoothness, especially if it occur on all chambers at the same
time. A high amplitude change is rated high in score and a
low amplitude change rated low. For each change in force
step a total score can be calculated as the sum of the scores
from all chambers. If the total score is high a penalty is added
to the previous force step in order avoid changing back to it.
Again, this mimics eq. 3.

4 Experimental setup
Several tests are conducted in order to evaluate the system’s
ability to be controlled by a velocity reference. For all tests Figure 6: 200 kg with no penalty.
the input signal is a pulse train with an amplitude of 3cm/s.
The tests are carried out in both directions of the cylinder.
Before changing direction the arm is set to stand still for 2
seconds. The input reference signal is somewhat smoothen
by limiting the maximum allowed acceleration and jerk. For
each control structure two load cases are tested, 200 kg and
400 kg. All controller parameters are tuned experimentally
and a penalty of 2000 N is used.

5 Results
Figure 6 and fig. 9 show the results of the test with 200kg and
400kg respectively. For the 200kg weight only the B and D
chambers switch pressure. They are small which results in a
quiet smooth movement. For the heavier weight all chambers
changes pressure. This occurs frequently during acceleration.

508
Figure 7: 200 kg with penalty strategy A. Figure 9: 400 kg with no penalty.

Figure 8: 200 kg with penalty stategy B. Figure 10: 400 kg with penalty strategy A.

509

Figure 11: 400 kg with penalty strategy B.
6 Discussion and future work
The results from the tests are promising. They show that with
simple control a relatively smooth operation of the arm is pos-
sible. Due to the nature of the system frequent switching be-
tween force steps can occur and must be handled in some way.
The different strategies tested showed that there is a compro-
mise between accuracy, smoothness of the arm and frequent
switching. Another factor is the energy efficiency. This has
not been studied in this work but it was shown in [13] that the
biggest losses are the compressibility losses and this should
be considered as well when selecting switching strategy. Next
step is to add the outer part of the excavator arm and study the
energy consumption compared to the original system to get an
idea of the energy saving potential. Another thing to be stud-
ied is the effect of different pressure rates in the chambers due
to different capacitances. This could lead to force transients
that counteracts the movement of the arm. Noise is another
concern that should be studied and is related to the pressure
build up in the chambers and frequent switching.
7 Conclusions
A test rig of an excavator arm actuated by a secondary con-
trolled multi-chamber cylinder has been built and tested. At
this first stage only the boom is installed and simple control
strategy is implemented and evaluated. For a lighter load the
big chamber do not switch anything and the effect of switch-
ing in the smaller chambers is negligible on the smoothness.
For the heavier weight all chambers switches pressure more
510
frequent which affected the smoothness of the arm. Two dif-
ferent strategies were tested to avoid this behaviour, both af-
fecting the switching of the valves. By adjusting the con-
trol and switching strategies it is potentially possible to adjust
operation conditions, controller trajectory performance and
noise generation.
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